Is Equipment Failure Your Biggest Problem?

With any survey, you have to consider the source to help assess its validity. So I admit that I looked warily upon the results of European Automation’s recent survey of customers across 30 countries in Europe, America and the Middle East.

European Automation provides supply and repair services for PLCs, servo drives, HMIs, CNC machine tool systems and robots. Considering the old saying that when all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail, I wondered how skewed the results to their survey might have been.

Their survey reportedly shows that the biggest threat to manufacturing productivity is unscheduled downtime due to equipment failure. Therefore, the ability to get the right replacement in less than a day is considered crucial.

With many plants operating around the clock, European Automation says considering that equipment failure is manufacturers’ biggest concern, coupled with the fact that more plants are operating around the clock, 24/7 availability of spares and an effective supply chain were the top priority for most respondents. In addition, 67.6 percent of those surveyed said that competitive pricing was important but that uncompromised quality was essential.

Though this would not qualify as a scientific poll result, I ask what you think your biggest problem is? Do you agree with the respondents to European Automation’s survey that equipment failure is your biggest concern? Or does something else rank higher on your list of threats to the success of your operation?